| Summary: | The Arctic Council, having agreed to act to reduce exposures to a number of priority pollutants in the Arctic region, has initiated a mercury project via the Arctic Council Action Plan (ACAP). The project is led by the Danish EPA with a Steering Group from all eight Arctic countries-Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and United States. The overall project objective is to contribute to a decrease of mercury releases from Arctic countries. This will be accomplished partly by contributing to the development of a common regional framework for an action plan or strategy for the decrease of mercury emissions, and partly by evaluating and selecting one or a few specific point sources for implementation of control measures. It is felt that the decrease of mercury releases from key sources should serve as a demonstration of existing possibilities, giving inspiration to other control measures in the region. One of the first steps in the action plan is the development of an inventory of mercury releases to the land, air, and water. Characterization of mercury usage and its disposition will provide the framework for an action plan and strategy for decreasing the amount of mercury in the environment. A detailed questionnaire was developed to collect consistent data from the involved countries, including key information on modeling parameters (e.g., latitude/longitude, stack parameters, chemical composition, and emissions control technology). EPA completed the U.S. portion of the questionnaire to provide data and information to the project. All data sources are publicly available and most are from EPA inventories, e.g., National Emissions Inventory (NEI) for air emissions and Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for solid waste disposal and water discharges. The results characterize the mobilization of mercury in the US to the land, air, and water. The overwhelming mobilization action is land disposal associated with gold mining. The most significant air source category is coal combustion. Other sources of air emissions include gold mining, chlor-alkali plants, municipal waste combustors, medical waste incinerators, and industrial boilers. There were minimal discharges to water bodies noted from the data available. The ACAP project should result in availability of data to enable assessment of mercury issues in the Arctic and is expected to be a model for international data exchange on mercury and other pollutants. The overall project is intended to identify research opportunities for engineering demonstrations that provide scientific information on mercury control options in the Arctic and around the world. Although this work was reviewed by EPA and approved for publication, it may not necessarily reflect official Agency policy.
|
|---|